Hospital patients are not always authorized to exit their beds without assistance. It is therefore desirable to predict the likelihood that a given patient will exit her bed when not permitted to do so. It is also desirable to issue a notification so that a caregiver can intervene to prevent an unauthorized exit (also referred to as an unauthorized egress).
Some systems described in the literature predict egress by monitoring the position of the patient on the bed. One example of such a system is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,208,250. Other systems predict egress as a function of the state of the bed itself, for example whether the bed is adjusted to a low elevation or a high elevation and/or whether or not siderails are deployed or stowed. Examples of such systems are described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/000,258 entitled “Method of Predicting Occupant Egress from an Occupant Support Based on Perimeter Panel Status and Occupant Location, and a Related Apparatus” filed on Jan. 19, 2016 and U.S. Provisional Patent Application 62/289,638 entitled “Apparatus and Method of Assessing the Status of an Occupant of an Occupant Support Based on Forces Exerted on a Perimeter Panel of the Occupant” filed on Feb. 1, 2016. Despite the merits of these systems, they do not consider the effect of factors external to the bed. These external factors may be instrumental in motivating or inspiring a patient to exit the bed, even if she is not authorized to do so without assistance. Therefore consideration of these factors may improve the accuracy and timeliness of egress predictions.